REPORT: Podesta May Have Violated Federal Law by Not Disclosing 75,000 Shares of Stock in Putin-Linked Company

Former Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta might be a bit less vocal about President Donald Trump’s so-called “Russia ties” after a new report tied Podesta to the board of an energy company linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to The Daily Caller, the top Clinton executive was a board member of Joule Unlimited, an energy company that accepted millions of dollars from a Putin-controlled fund. Podesta had received 75,000 shares in the company but never disclosed that publicly, The Daily Caller reported.

Podesta joined the firm back in June of 2011, well before the official start of Clinton’s campaign. He left the board in 2014 to become a special counselor to then-President Barack Obama, and received the shares on his departure.

However, according to Breitbart, Podesta “never disclosed his position on Joule Unlimited’s board of directors and failed to include the stock payout in his federal financial disclosures, as required by law, before he became President Obama’s senior adviser in January 2014.”

Even a lobbyist for the liberal group Public Citizen was critical of the finding.

“Well, Podesta should certainly have been more upfront in filling this out. Clearly, it should have been fully disclosed,” Public Citizen’s Craig Holman told The Daily Caller. “That’s the point of the personal financial disclosure forms, especially for anyone entering the White House.”

And if you want to talk about bias in this case, consider the fact that Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader.

There’s also the fact that the federal government requires individuals to “report any purchase, sale or exchange by you, your spouse, or dependent children … of any property, stocks, bonds, commodity futures and other securities when the amount of the transaction exceeded $1,000.”

That’s from Form 278 Schedule B of the Public Financial Disclosure Report. Podesta’s 278 Schedule B was as empty as his influence on the White House under the Trump administration. Thank you, I’ll be here all weekend.

But seriously, folks. Podesta — the highest ranking figure in Hillary Clinton’s campaign aside from Clinton herself, appears to have deliberately withheld a pretty big financial tie to a Russian energy company backed by none other than Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself. That should be setting off alarm bells even for liberals.

It’s funny how the media keep on talking about Donald Trump’s Russia ties when there are actually more salient ties to the Moscow regime via the Clinton camp.

But this is what we deal with when it comes to the left. What a surprise. The next time your liberal friend hits you up with a Trump “Russia ties” story, link them to this.